Saif al-Adel

Saif al-Adel (born 11 April 1960), born Mohammed Salah ad-Din Zaidan, was a colonel of Egypt and a member of Al-Qaeda.

Biography
Mohammed Salah ad-Din Zaidan was born in Egypt on the eleventh of April in either 1960 or 1963, and he enlisted in the Egyptian Army in 1976. Trained in the Soviet Union, he was promoted to Colonel and became an explosives expert. In 1981, he fled from Egypt after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, as he was accused of assisting Khalid Islambouli in carrying out the jihadist hit. al-Adel left for Afghanistan and trained the Mujahideen in explosive use, and in 1993 he headed to Somalia, training the jihadists there in explosives and fighting in the Battle of Mogadishu himself. He became a close friend of Osama bin Laden and aided him in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya and escorted bin Laden to the Tarnak Farms in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan months later. After Mohammed Atef's death in the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Saif al-Adel became the new military chief of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. He became the leader of the cell in Iran as well, and although he was captured by the Iranian government, he was eventually exchanged for an Al-Qaeda hostage.